Pacific Low Price CD: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers

Winchester has a history of readable, informative, fascinating books, and I've read them all. Each is different, of course, as the subject is different, but there's a general narrative arc in all that is consistent. When I picked up Pacific, though, I was expecting something along the lines of his previous Atlantic, but this one is quite a bit different. Whereas Atlantic focussed on the domination of the ocean by European powers, and how this reflected the larger geopolitics of the age, Pacific takes a look along more economic grounds than historical. That doesn't mean the history isn't here: it is, just muted a bit.While you could argue Pacific history goes back even further than Atlantic, considering things like the Polynesians and the migrations across land masses in the Pacific area, and that does get touched on, the focus is more around the rise and domination of the big player in the area: China. Yes, there's the detours to the Pitcairns and similar outposts, a look at the Panama canal and its effect on world trade, and a glance at the Korean peninsular, there's more focus on Japan in the 20th century and China in the 21st as the defining superpowers of the current age. It's all a fascinating read, from many aspects, and written in Winchester's usual readable style. This isn't a thin, light book, but it is eminently interesting, informative, and challenging in that it makes you think. That's what a great book should do. Another excellent book from Simon Winchester!

Simon Winchester does a fabulous job of presenting the "power" of the Pacific Ocean, geographically, economically, politically, and weather-wise. His easy reading style makes the subject more than just interesting - it reads far more like an novel than a reference book. The Pacific as presented here is the ocean of the future, making its mark most prominently in 1950, continuing to increase its influence today. Winchester organizes his book in 10 chapters, each based on an event or series of somehow related events that define the Pacific between 1950 and 2015. Most are well known, some forgotten, but their relevance is brought together in a great story. To this reader (a Gulf Coast resident) , the chapter on the weather influences from the Pacific is fascinating. Winchester explains the El Nino effect in a simplistic and well-supported manner, most interesting in this El Nino winter of 2016. Highly recommended - Balboa and Magellan would approve.

Well written. Informative and entertaining.

Nice story

I'm a Simon Winchester fan, and have read most or all of his books, but this one just isn't up to his usual level of excellence, and it's more opinionated than most. I loved "Atlantic" as an audiobook, and ordered this one as well, but it just seems to be a collection of unrelated elements. I've always liked how he explores issues in great depth and finds facts that are interesting but not well known, but I just think his writing and the composition of this book aren't quite up to his usual Winchesterian standard, and he spends a great deal of time pontificating about global warming. He also devotes a chapter to the unfortunate consequences of nuclear testing, largely blaming the United States, with only a bare mention of the Soviet Union, as if we could have simply declared a moratorium and everything would have been just wonderful otherwise. Certainly, not one of my favorite Winchester books.